Wireless that works in a crowd

The unpredictability of what large numbers of people do with their wireless devices when in a crowd has caused problems ever since wireless became the preferred last mile solution. But there is a solution on the horizon?

A recent demonstration in San Francisco showed off a technology that Steve Perlman, a serial entrepreneur and inventor who sold WebTV to Microsoft for more than $500 million in the late 1990s, contends will give mobile users far faster cellular network speeds, with fewer dropped phone calls and other annoyances, even in stadiums and other places where thousands of people use mobile phones at the same time, Nick Wingfield reports.

In the demonstration, eight iPhones played different high-definition movies from Netflix at once, all receiving the video wirelessly. Rather than causing the local network to stumble under the strain of so much data jamming the airwaves at once, the video played on all the screens with nary a stutter.